A Conceptual History of Modern Embryology by Scott GilbertReview by: Evelyn Fox KellerIsis, Vol. 84, No. 1 (Mar., 1993), pp. 175-176Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/235613 .

Accessed: 09/05/2014 14:31

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The University of Chicago Press and The History of Science Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Isis.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.18 on Fri, 9 May 2014 14:31:54 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 84: 1 (1993) 175

istrv. xiv + 298 pp., illus., figs., tables, app., indexes. Berlin/New York: Springer-Verlag, 1991. $130.

While this book is a good brief treatment of the chemistry of peptides, the subtitle is mis- leading since it is hardly a brief history of the subject. In fact, the history is limited to a ca- sual recital of the names of many persons who contributed to the understanding of peptides from a chemical point of view, sometimes with mention of their academic connection, but rarely with any in-depth treatment of the ba- sis of their contribution or the basic flow of ideas.

While there are fifty-five plates picturing contributors to the subject, all but seven are clustered in an appendix at the end of the book rather than shown where their work is dis- cussed. A separate section of the same ap- pendix carries, in alphabetical sequence, a short paragraph covering life span, educa- tion, institutional connections, areas of re- search, and honors.

Except for this appendix, the book has very little historical matter except for the sorts of

personal references that are commonly in- cluded in review articles in journals such as Chemical Reviews and Physiological Reviews or volumes such as Annual Review of Bio- chemistry or Annual Review of Physiology. A final point for criticism is obvious: the price, which shows that the book is clearly intended for sale to academic research libraries rather than to individual readers.

AARON J. IHDE

Scott Gilbert (Editor). A Conceptual History of Modern Embryology. (Developmental Bi- ology, 7.) xiv + 266 pp., illus., index. New York/London: Plenum Press, 1991.

Over the last fifteen years, developmental bi- ology has become one of the fastest growing and most exciting subfields of the biological sciences. Most of its practitioners will credit molecular biology for having rescued the subject of development from the state of near rigor mortis in which earlier generations of embryologists had left it; some even see to-

. '~~4 5 .

Naziinstuctionabutherediarydisases(eproduedfroBaume,ed.,NS-B

Nazi instruction about hereditary diseases (reproduced from Ba6umer, ed., NS-Biologie).

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.18 on Fri, 9 May 2014 14:31:54 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

176 BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 84: 1 (1993)

day's remarkable advances as the crowning glory of molecular biology. Scott Gilbert's mission, however (evident both in his sci- entific work and in his historical contribu- tions), is to reclaim a crucial continuity between the older science of classical em- bryology and the newer science of modem developmental biology. The very title of this collection of essays signals his intent: A Con- ceptual History of Modern Embryology is aimed at annealing the disjunction that was codified in the 1960s by the renaming of "embryology" as "developmental biology." The book is also directed toward filling a large lacuna in the history of twentieth-century life science.

Indeed, to a considerable extent, the gaps in the historical literature parallel the gaps in the scientific; most historical accounts of twentieth-century biology bifurcate along the same axis that divided embryology from ge- netics in the earlier part of the century, and they allow the history of embryology to end with Hans Spemann's important work on in- duction. By contrast, the focus of the eleven essays in this volume moves continuously from the precursors of induction to its successors, stopping just short of the molecular accounts of the phenomenon that occupy today's re- searchers. The first half of the volume is devoted to the earlier history: the excellent studies by Frederick Churchill, Jean-Louis Fischer, and Jane Maienschein all enrich our understanding of the multifacted beginnings of classical embryology and Entwicklungs- mechanik in nineteenth-century Europe. Jane Oppenheimer's and Margaret Saha's essays focus on the contributions of Curt Herbst to the concept of induction, while those of Jo- hannes Holtfreter, Gerald Grunwald, and Pnina Abir-Am track the evolution of that concept in the critical experiment of Spemann and Hilde Mangold. Finally, the last three essays, by Gilbert, Richard Burian et al., and Jan Sapp, pick up the trail left in 1938 and begin the important job of exploring the many bridges between embryology and genetics that were attempted, though often frustrated by institutional and disciplinary politics, be- tween 1938 and the present era.

This volume provides an excellent com- panion to an earlier collection by T. J. Hor- der, J. A. Witkowski, and C. C. Wylie (A History of Embryology [Cambridge, 1985]); I hope it will serve to stimulate other histo- rians in the pursuit of the further research that is so sorely needed in this crucial yet still un-

derexplored area of the history of twentieth- century biology.

EVELYN Fox KELLER

Theodor Heuss. Anton Dohrn: A Life for Science. Edited by Christiane Groeben. In- troduction by Karl Josef Partsch. Translated by Liselotte Dieckmann. With a contri- bution by Margaret Boveri. xxxvi + 401 pp., frontis., illus., index. Berlin/New York: Springer-Verlag, 1991. DM 78.

This translation of Theodor Heuss's classic biography of Anton Dohrn is most welcome. Dohrn, who grew up in Stettin and studied in Bonn, Jena, and Berlin, founded the Naples Zoological Station in 1872 and devoted his life to its administration. The station was a unique amalgam of private entrepreneurship and international public funding. Dohrn in- vested the initial money (to his father's con- siderable displeasure), and the station was in- tended to operate on income from tourist visits to its aquarium. When this proved inade- quate, Dohrn devised the system of research tables that were rented out to governments, scientific societies, and universities for the use of visiting scientists.

Keeping the station running required great finesse on Dohrn's part. He was able to win substantial contributions from the German government through patriotic appeals, yet he maintained sufficient independence to assure other governments and institutions of the es- sential private and international character of the undertaking. He managed to retain the support of Bismarck for the station despite the fact that Dohrn's brother Heinrich had deeply offended the Iron Chancellor with a political speech. A devout Darwinist, Dohrn nevertheless dissociated himself from the controversial Darwinian ideology of Ernst Haeckel well enough to maintain the trust of conservative-minded German officials and even Wilhelm II and Umberto I.

Dohrn was born into a cultivated family his godfather was the composer Mendelsohn- Bartholdy and he retained a lifelong inter- est in music and the arts. It is no accident that the Naples Station was decorated with fres- coes. He was attracted to a wide variety of people. Many of his closest friends were non- German, and Maria Baranowska, his wife, came from an exiled Polish-Russian family. Dohrn was subject to serious bouts of depres-

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.18 on Fri, 9 May 2014 14:31:54 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions